Collective Action in the Digital Reality: the Case of Platform‐Based Workers

What is it about?

This article highlights the challenges of collective action in the digital reality in the UK. Using sociological scholarship, the article elaborates on the emergence of flexibility and individualization in the digital reality, particularly in platform-based work (such as Uber), and how they hinder collective action. The article then describes how platform-based workers currently organize themselves, demonstrating how these current collective actions are characterized by the same individualization and flexibility typifying the digital reality and why they lack legal protection. Based on this reality, the article proposes making several accommodations to give platform-based workers the right to unionize, notably by adjusting certain principles of the UK labor law to the unique architecture of the flexible digital reality.

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash